Scott Shafer stands behind a microphone at Manley Field House, fiery and emotional. He curses. He tears up. His words come in staccato bursts, rising as he points and pounds the podium.

His message is intense, and also well-rehearsed.

Shafer, unable to sleep that morning before his introduction as Syracuse football coach, walked his dog and sat down with his wife, Missy, at their home in Fayetteville. He talked about how he wanted to brand the program. One phrase kept coming back.

The Syracuse football program had to be "hard-nosed."

It had been hard-nosed before.

***

The Orange won its only national title in 1959-60, finishing unbeaten behind Ernie Davis, Art Baker and coach Ben Schwartzwalder. Davis is a legend, the first black Heisman Trophy winner, and teammates still call Baker "a tough son of a (gun)." Schwartzwalder was a paratrooper during the D-Day invasion and was awarded a Purple Heart.

It was a team that led the country in scoring at 37.5 points a game and gave up less than a touchdown.

It was a team whose players played both ways but utilized first and second units, wearing down opponents.

"Usually," team captain Gerhard Schwedes said, "by the end of the second quarter."

It was a team that found racial harmony in an era where there was little, agreeing that despite going to the Cotton Bowl game in Dallas, they wouldn't abide segregation. That game was marked by a brawl, one that Syracuse players say was ignited by racist comments toward one of three black stars on the team.

View full sizeLife Magazine ran a spread on Syracuse's 1960 Cotton Bowl win, a 23-14 victory over Texas that clinched SU's only national championship.Life Magazine

***

Before becoming a football coach, Shafer studied to be a teacher, learning the value of education through repetition.

During that first news conference, reporters and boosters became his students and Manley Field House his classroom.

Over the course of 27 minutes and 18 seconds, Shafer used the phrase hard-nosed seven times. After obligatory thank yous, Shafer got down to discussing his vision. Hard-nosed was the sixth, and then the 11th, word out of his mouth.

"No. 1, I envision a hard-nosed team that's from a hard-nosed town. The thing I like about Syracuse, the city, is that the people who live here and embrace it, they're tough people, they're hard-nosed people who work their ass off. And they expect a hard-nosed football team. In my opinion, it's our job to put a product on the field that the community can say that's us."

His wife tried to dissuade him from using the phrase that morning, uncertain of his point and worried it would be over the top.

"I was just like, 'What is that?'" Missy said. "Hard-nosed? It didn't resonate with me. He went on to explain it and I got it, but at first I just thought, 'What?'"

The phrase struck a chord in the Syracuse community. Fans use it in Twitter hashtags and greet Shafer by pumping their fist and exclaiming "hard-nosed."

Hard-nosed remix: Syracuse football's Scott ShaferScott Shafer was introduced as the new head coach of the Syracuse University football team at a press conference at the Manley Field House football wing on Jan. 11, 2013. Remix video by Geoff Herbert and Katrina Tulloch.

During an offseason speaking engagement, a fan came up to him and said he'd spent the whole talk eagerly waiting for him to drop a "hard-nosed" on the crowd. During the spring game Shafer thanked the "hard-nosed fans in attendance."

Shafer has maintained a sense of humor about it, even tweeting a picture of German hardneck garlic from a farmer's market earlier this summer, but he wants the phrase to maintain panache instead of become a punchline.

He doesn't know where he first heard it. His father said it. So did all his coaches. He knows only that it was something passed down to him as part of his Midwest ethos, inherited and buried inside him as if it were genetic.

***

Schwedes doesn't have Shafer's problem. He knows exactly where he first heard the phrase.

"I'd never heard it before Ben."

It was one of Schwartzwalder's go-to phrases along with "it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog."

His assistant coaches called big hits "hard-nosed shots" and told players to play "nose-to-nose."

Players climbed 20-foot ropes in full pads before practice. Calisthenics were grueling, and then practice began.

Gerhard SchwedesNicholas Lisi / The Post-Standard

He'd worn his team out the previous season, Schwedes said, and blamed himself for Syracuse tiring in an Orange Bowl loss to Oklahoma. Before the 1959 season started he took the captain aside.

Douglas Harper is a journalist and history major who runs the website www.etymonline.com, an Etymology (word origin) dictionary. He uses Google Books to track the origin of words and phrases.

He found that in the 1950s, hard-nosed was used to describe tough characters, particularly those in the military.

Army football coach Earl Blaik wrote in his book "You Have to Pay the Price" that Schwartzwalder had called the Black Knights' 1956 team hard-nosed. By 1959, Syracuse was famed for its own hard-nosed style as evidenced by the spread in Life Magazine.

Soon after, playing hard-nosed football became a common refrain from coaches across the country.

"The Syracuse references seem to be among the earliest, if not the earliest," Harper said. "It would be impossible to make a certain statement about the link between that coach and the popularization of that term, but it seems he was using it prominently about the time it became popular, and was leading a successful program that drew a lot of attention. Life Magazine at that time was the dominant magazine in the country, seen by millions."

The best college football teams usually have something in common with their communities and coaches.

Southern California's top teams featured quarterbacks with Hollywood looks, while Nebraska's best groups looked as if they came out of the cornfields and strapped on shoulder pads. Miami's champions had the swagger of South Beach, while Alabama carries itself with the ruthless efficiency of its head coach.

Shafer played quarterback at Riverside High School in Painesville, Ohio, a rust belt city just like Syracuse. He grew up the son of a teacher and football coach, one whose chance at coaching in college was dashed by family illness, his career as a head coach cut short by a heart attack.

Shafer played collegiately at Ohio, injured his knee, and transferred to Baldwin-Wallace College. He suffered more injuries and played well when healthy. He spent 22 years as an assistant coach at eight different colleges before landing his first head coaching job at SU.

Syracuse is a city whose economic glory days are in the rear-view mirror, a city that has seen its peak reduced by the erosion of the salt mining industry, the collapse of trade through the Erie Canal and, lastly, the collapse of industry across the rust belt.

"I always felt Pittsburgh, it's the Steelers. Cleveland, it's the Browns. Chicago, it's the Bears. We're all like communities, you know?" Shafer said. "The more people I met and the more former players that I spoke too, I felt like I was at home. It reminded me of how I grew up. It's a community of hard-nosed people that work hard. Four seasons. You get up in the morning and you shovel your driveway, you knock the snow off and go. There's a natural toughness in this part of the country, this part of New York. And what a great reputation for a football team."

The most recent attempt to change that culture, the snazzy West Coast offense of Greg Robinson, led to some of the worst years the program has seen.

Instead, Syracuse's best teams played outdoors in Archbold Stadium in weather that today's fans and players find too cold. The Orange is known for producing rugged running backs like Davis, Jim Brown, Floyd Little and Larry Csonka.

"Ben didn't like to throw the ball," said Baker, a fullback on the 1959 team. "We pounded people, man. We would pound you to death."

Ben Schwartzwalder stands with tight end John Mackey in this photo, taken in 1962.File photo

Since the turn of the century SU's defensive players have gone on to professional success, with Shafer's defense pacing the team and Keith Bulluck, Dwight Freeney and Chandler Jones leading the professional contingent.

Now, as Syracuse embarks on its initial season in the ACC, the Orange face the speed of the South and a handful of teams that regularly recruit the country's top players.

The Orange, Shafer admits, may never be in that category.

Now, in its first year in the ACC, Syracuse's three-star recruits will meet teams laden with five-star reputations, hoping that toughness trumps talent.

"No-names who become big names," Shafer calls them.

It's a perfect mantra for a team and a city trying to re-discover its glory days.

***

Shafer, though, had no idea how good a fit hard-nosed is.

He'd never seen the story in Life Magazine from 1959, never heard the role Schwartzwalder played in spreading the phrase, never knew that Syracuse's national champions once prided themselves on being hard-nosed 54 years before he made it his motto.